20 Comments

Matt, anotherMarch 31, 2015 6:13 am

So far, I hink Ducey is going to be a blind pig. He will find an acorn now and then. A good bit of the police community here was against the bill so it was an easy veto for Ducey. Az has had several bad shootings over the last decade and has never seen Ferguson levels of hate and violence over them.

RonMarch 31, 2015 6:26 am

Kevin D. Williamson may not know one breed of collie from another, but he sure got the Celine Dion thing right! And I love his tag line at the end: “Canada geese: Doing jobs American voters won’t do.” CLASSIC!

JoelMarch 31, 2015 6:45 am

In regard to the guy with the vulgar t-shirt, if the article is correct the airline guy did exactly the right thing. May be an uncharacteristically old-fashioned policy but that doesn’t make it a bad one. Why people feel the need to dress and act like they’re on the set of Idiocracy in the name of individuality, I don’t understand. But it’s not the responsibility of other people to put up with it. And it has NOTHING to do with the damned First Amendment.

KiAMarch 31, 2015 9:18 am

regarding the airline, i think it has multiple angles:
*) validity of the airline’s policy in principle
*) legality of the airline’s policy
*) worker’s discretion to enforce the policy
*) passenger’s leniency to back off and compromise
*) subjectivity of offensiveness & vulgarity

everyone seems to take the offensive nature of the shirt for granted. “offensive” is completely arbitrary. the shirt could be a picture of a gun, or the initials of an organization, a color, a drawing, or offensive in different a language, etc. there’s no limit to someone finding something offensive. are we supposed to just cave in every time someone whines about a personal discomfort?

what if it wasn’t a shirt but a facial tattoo? what if the offensive feature wasn’t made by choice but say at birth? or what if the feature was made by poor choices & negligence — i.e. being overweight?

anyway, i think tolerance goes both ways. in this case, since the airline was so adamant, it would have been better if the passenger would have complied, and perhaps blacklisted the airline in the future.

in the US the line between a hero & a hot headed idiot that’s making a scene is so incredibly thin. i think most are viewed as idiot troublemakers. this may be an insite into how we’re not a nation of principles anymore and just do what it takes to get by. oh oh — too deep.

UnReconstructedMarch 31, 2015 9:18 am

Yep, their airline, their rules. And besides, wearing something that, lets face it, was deliberately offensive is asking for issues. Sure he has the right to wear it. But if you are going to deliberately offend people, you should be prepared to accept the consequences. You have the right to ‘holler long live the KKK’ at a black panther meeting, also. But you shouldn’t be expecting the the cops, the national guard or the Lone Ranger to ride up and save your butt. Ain’t no cure for dumb.

And for the net security tricks, I’d add another one. Install a firewall that lets you know when a site wants to make a call home. I’ve got one on all my computers, and put on on my ‘jailbroken’ Iphone.

It’s appalling how many sites want to grab your info and contact somebody or other besides their own site. .

BorepatchMarch 31, 2015 10:52 am

Re: the security link, I’m a *huge* fan of 2 factor authentication, especially when the site you’re logging into (e.g. your bank) sends a text to your cell phone. Very easy, and surprisingly effective.

Border collies are going to chase off geese? I’d buy popcorn to see that. Geese are mean. But if any dog can, it’s a border collie. Freaky smart.

I understand about passwords. I really do. But get IT involved and it’s “ten characters, including small letter, capital letter, number, punctuation mark, change it every month, and can’t reuse the last 20.”

Worked at a company once where if you quit entering long enough to sneeze your screensaver would pop up and you needed your password to get back in. Every monitor in the shop had a stickynote on it with the password.

Re the tee shirt guy… People tend to forget or ignore that for every right there is a corresponding obligation. In this case the guy did have the right to express himself through his written speech on the tee shirt. But there was also the obligation to not annoy others through that written speach even if the only ones to take exception would be members of the crew. Businesses have the right to set policies for how their business will operate and not to tolerate those customers who violate those policies but they have an obligation to try and resolve the issue which the flight attendant did.

ClaireMarch 31, 2015 12:53 pm

“But there was also the obligation to not annoy others through that written speach even if the only ones to take exception would be members of the crew.”

Although I completely agree it was the airline’s policy, the airline’s call (and Tee-Shirt Guy sounded like a jerk), “offensive” is in the eye of the beholder. I’ve seen plenty of things that offended me that wouldn’t have offended somebody else and vice versa. So I just hope the airline policy was more specific about what constitutes “offensive” than the article seems to imply.

Matt, anotherMarch 31, 2015 1:28 pm

As far as the geese go, instead of siccing border collies on them, why not let the homeless eat them? The geese, not the collies. If the homeless are to squeamish to do it themselves, then give workers from the homeless shelters permission to capture, kill and process geese for the table. Win-win.

UnReconstructedMarch 31, 2015 1:48 pm

I’ve got a border collie. She is freaky smart. Waaaay smart enough to avoid geese, and harass them. After all they were bred to handle sheep, which can get pretty mean and outweigh them by a huge factor. I have geese occasionally decide to hang out on my property, and she is more than willing to chase them. She sees chasing things as her JOB. There are two problems with her re: geese.

1. getting her to *stop* chasing them once they take flight. She *will* eventually give up once they are out of sight, which may be a mile down the road. Once she is fixated on chasing something, she will not stop.

2. Goose poop, for some reason seems to be attractive and tasty to my dogs. It *can’t* be good for them. Once the web footed miscreants are gone they go snuffling about looking for the nasty morsels.

MamaLibertyMarch 31, 2015 2:00 pm

The goose poop won’t harm the dogs, honestly. They may develop loose poop of their own if they get a lot of it, but it won’t do anything worse than make your yard even more messy.

My Aussies loved every kind of bird poop, goat poop, and occasionally even the horse and cow kind. No way really to keep them out of it, so they were never house dogs.

The question I have about all the geese in the city there is what are they eating? Geese prefer greem grass to eat, above anything, and it’s hard to imagine them getting much out of the close clipped lawns, but I guess that’s it.

MamaLibertyMarch 31, 2015 2:00 pm

green grass, not “greem.” LOL

UnReconstructedMarch 31, 2015 2:55 pm

I’ve seen them hanging out at office parks and town parks. They use border collies to chase them out of the office parks, ’cause they poop everywhere, and foul the pond.

I gotta catch up around here, but I love the ’10 traits for better living’ article 🙂

LarryAMarch 31, 2015 10:27 pm

As far as the geese go, instead of siccing border collies on them, why not let the homeless eat them? The geese, not the collies. If the homeless are to squeamish to do it themselves, then give workers from the homeless shelters permission to capture, kill and process geese for the table.

In D.C. of course unlocking and loading your shotgun (presuming you can get one registered) is grounds for SWATing and a long stint as guest of the city. (Unless you’re David Gregory.)

😉

MJRApril 1, 2015 7:47 am

I am just a poor fellow living up here in the Great White North so please bare with me. :^)

The first ten amendments to the US constitution (bill of rights) were put in place to assure the anti-federalists who didn’t want to ratify the constitution. These amendments were a set of limits on the powers of the government. So they are not a list of things a person can do they are a set of limits that government cannot do to a person. These limits were extended via the 14th amendment to cover all levels of government.

So unless I am missing something the Bill of Rights is a “thou shall not do to a citizen” list for government I.E. it is not a list of things a person can do but what cannot be done to them by government agents.

Now as to the airline and the guy with the rude shirt… While large corporations may think they are governments they are not. Airlines are private corporations so the punk’s, er, guy’s assertion as to his right to freedom of speech is total BS. If one takes a look at the fine print of the airline ticket (contract) I suspect that one would find that they had the authority to kick the guy’s butt off the flight. Remember the staff did try to resolve the situation in a fair and equitable manner.

“It’s like any service business. If you run a family restaurant and somebody is swearing, you kindly ask them to leave,” – Kenneth Quinn, aviation lawyer and former chief counsel at the U.S. FAA

ClaireApril 1, 2015 7:52 am

“So unless I am missing something the Bill of Rights is a “thou shall not do to a citizen” list for government I.E. it is not a list of things a person can do but what cannot be done to them by government agents.”

MJR, are you answering somebody else’s comment? ‘Cause I think everybody’s completely agreed with you. I appear to be the only one making a (very slight) objection and that was only on the question of what constitutes “offensive.” Or are your remarks about the BoR directed more at the tee-shirt guy?

Paul BonneauApril 1, 2015 11:29 am

“People tend to forget or ignore that for every right there is a corresponding obligation. In this case the guy did have the right to express himself through his written speech on the tee shirt. But there was also the obligation to not annoy others…”

There are no rights, and there certainly are no “implicit” obligations either.

Vendors should be able to serve whom they please. But in this case, the airline *already* served him. They had (essentially) negotiated a contract with him – he paid the money, they take him somewhere. They shouldn’t renege on that contract. It’s unlikely the contract included a requirement that he must dress appropriately. If it did though, or had some other similar wording boiling down to “passengers must behave appropriately in the opinion of our employees”, then it would be acceptable for the airline to act as it did.

On re-reading, it looks like they DO have that in the contract: “I can show you in our contract of carriage that you can’t wear any shirts that says offensive…” The airline was in the right.

On Gov. Ducey’s veto, I don’t think any government employees should have any anonymity. We need something to restrain their depredations after all.

It’s a good thing geese are bombing Washington DC with shit. It might improve the place.

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